God Is Imaginary - excellent argument!

[Taverner]

I didn't write this. If I did, I would be way cooler than I am. But alas, I am not, and I did not.

http://godisimaginary.com/video10.htm

-------------------------------------------------

If you are an educated Christian, I would like to talk with you today about an important and interesting question. Have you ever thought about using your college education to think about your faith? Your life and your career demand that you behave and act rationally. Let's apply your critical thinking skills as we discuss 10 simple questions about your religion.

Here is an example of the kind of thing I am talking about: As a Christian, you believe in the power of prayer. According to a recent poll (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42061), 3 out of 4 doctors believe that God is performing medical miracles on earth right now. Most Christians believe that God is curing cancers, healing diseases, reversing the effects of poisons and so on.

So here is question #1: Why won't God heal amputees?

It's a simple question, isn't it? We all know that amputated legs do not spontaneously regenerate in response to prayer. Amputees get no miracles from God.

If you are an intelligent person, you have to admit that it's an interesting question On the one hand, you believe that God answers prayers and performs miracles. On the other hand, you know that God completely ignores amputees when they pray for miracles.

How do you deal with this discrepancy? As an intelligent person, you have to deal with it, because it makes no sense. In order to handle it, notice that you have to create some kind of rationalization. You have to invent an excuse on God's behalf to explain this strange fact of life. You might say, "well, God must have some kind of special plan for amputees." So you invent your excuse, whatever it is, and then you stop thinking about it because it is uncomfortable.

Here is another example. As a Christian, you believe that God cares about you and answers your prayers.

So the second question is: Why are there so many starving people in our world?

Look out at our world and notice that millions of children are dying of starvation. It really is horrific. Why would God be worried about you getting a raise, while at the same time ignoring the prayers of these desperate, innocent little children? It really doesn't make any sense, does it? Why would a loving god do this?

To explain it, you have to come up with some sort of very strange excuse for God. Like, "God wants these children to suffer and die for some divine, mysterious reason." Then you push it out of your mind because it absolutely does not fit with your view of a loving, caring God.

Third question: Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible? Look up these verses:

- Exodus 35:2 – God demands that we kill everyone who works on the Sabbath day.

- Deuteronomy 21:18-21 – God demands that we kill disobedient teenagers.

- Leviticus 20:13 – God demands the death of homosexuals.

- Deuteronomy 22:13-21 – God demands that we kill girls who are not virgins when they marry.

And so on… There are lots of verses like these.

It doesn't make any sense, does it? Why would a loving God want us to murder our fellow human beings over such trivial matters? Just because you work on the wrong day of the week, you must die? That makes no sense, does it? In fact, if you think about it, you realize that it is insane. So you create some kind of rationalization to explain these verses.

Question #4: Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense? You have a college degree, so you know what I'm talking about. You know how science works. You happily use the products of science every day: your car, your cell phone, your microwave oven, your TV, your computer. These are all products of the scientific process. You know that science is incredibly important to our economy and to our lives.

But there is a problem. As an educated person you know that the Bible contains all sorts of information that is total nonsense from a scientific perspective.

- God did not create the world in 6 days 6,000 years ago like the Bible says.

- There was never a worldwide flood that covered Mt. Everest like the Bible says.

- Jonah did not live inside a fish's stomach for three days like the Bible says.

- God did not create Adam from a handful of dust like the Bible says.

These stories are all nonsense. Why would an all-knowing God write nonsense? It makes no sense, does it? So you create some type of very strange excuse to try to explain why the Bible contains total nonsense.

Question #5: Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible? Look up these Bible verses:

- Exodus 21:20-21 – God says that it is OK to own slaves, and it is also OK to beat them.

- Colossians 3:22-24 – Slaves need to obey their masters.

- Ephesians 6:5 – Slaves need to obey their masters just as they would obey Christ.

- 1 Peter 2:18 – Slaves need to obey their masters, even if their masters are harsh .

And so on…

And why do all intelligent people abhor slavery and make it completely illegal? You have to come up with some kind of weird rationalization to explain it.

Question #6: Why do bad things happen to good people? That makes no sense. You have created an exotic excuse on God's behalf to rationalize it.

Question #7: Why didn't any of Jesus' miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence? It's very strange, isn't it? You have created an excuse to rationalize it.

Question #8: How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you? Jesus is all-powerful and timeless, but if you pray for Jesus to appear, nothing happens. You have to create a weird rationalization to deal with this discrepancy.

Question #9 – Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood? It sounds totally grotesque, doesn't it? Why would al all-powerful God want you to do something that, in any other context, sounds like a disgusting, cannibalistic, satanic ritual?

And finally, Question #10 – Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians? Christians get married in front of God and their Christian friends, all of whom are praying to God for the marriage to succeed. And then they say, "What God has put together, let no man put asunder." God is all-powerful, so if God has put two people together that should seal the deal, right? Yet Christians get divorced at the same rate as everyone else. To explain this, you have to create some convoluted rationalization.

So, we have looked at 10 fascinating questions. In order to believe in God, you have had to create all sorts of strange rationalizations and excuses. If you are an intelligent, college-educated person, all of these excuses and rationalizations probably make you uncomfortable. If you think about it honestly, using the critical thinking skills that you learned in college, you have to admit that your answers to these questions make no sense at all.

Now, let me show you something remarkable. What if you instead assume that God is imaginary? A funny thing happens: the answers to every one of these questions make complete sense. Just look at all ten questions as an intelligent person:

1) Why won't God heal amputees? Because God is imaginary, and he doesn't answer any prayers. Every "answered prayer" is actually a coincidence. All scientific evidence supports this conclusion.

2) Why are there so many starving people in our world? Because God is imaginary, and he is therefore unable to answer their prayers.

3) Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible? Because God is imaginary, and the Bible was written by ridiculous, ruthless men rather than any sort of loving being.

4) Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense? Ditto. Primitive men wrote the bible, not an all-knowing being.

5) Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery? Ditto.

6) Why do bad things happen to good people? Because God is imaginary and bad things happen at the same statistical rates to everyone.

7) Why didn't any of Jesus' miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence? Because God is imaginary, and Jesus' miracles are myths.

8) How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you? Because God is imaginary.

9) Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood? Because God is imaginary, and this bizarre ritual came from a pagan religion.

10) Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians? Because God is imaginary.

Do you see what has happened here? When we assume that God exists, the answers to these ten questions make absolutely no sense. But if we assume that God is imaginary, our world makes complete sense.

It's interesting, isn't it? Actually, it's more than interesting – it is incredibly important.

Our world only makes sense when we understand that God is imaginary.

This is how intelligent, rational people know that God is imaginary.

When you use your brain, and when you think logically about your religious faith, you can reach only one possible conclusion: the "god" that you have heard about since you were an infant is completely imaginary. You have to willfully discard rationality, and accept hundreds of bizarre rationalizations to believe in your "god."

Now, let me ask you one last question: why should you care? What difference does it make if people want to believe in a "god", even if he is imaginary?

It matters because people who believe in imaginary beings are delusional.

It matters because people who talk to imaginary beings are delusional.

It matters because people who believe in imaginary superstitions like prayer are delusional.

It's that simple, and that obvious. Your religious beliefs hurt you personally and hurt us as a species because they are delusional. The belief in any "god" is complete nonsense.

You are a smart person. It is time for you to use your intelligence to free yourself from these delusions. It is time for you to begin thinking like a rational human being, rather than clinging to imaginary friends and childhood fantasies.

Would you like to learn more? Please Visit WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com and GodIsImaginary.com.

[Union Thug]

1. So simple. And true.

[TNDemo]

2. A thoughtful book along this line is God's Problem.

Written by a university religion professor (still teaching) who lost his faith along the way.

[pokerfan]

3. Epicurus sussed it out twenty-three centuries ago

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

[Polato Deferred]

4. Please sir

i am a rather well educated christian, or so i consider
myself. i have been on five mission trips to Mexico and to
places here in our united states and believe your arguments
are wrong and have little basis in any religious fact. you see
i am a lutheran which, if you have done your homework right,
as i have guessed you have makes your arguments change a
little.

Plato deFerred

[Taverner]

5. I will admit Lutherans (if Evanelical Free Synod) do have a different view

As do Mary Knoll Catholics, American Baptists and African Methodist Episcopals.

This is a good opportunity to highlight those differences.

The Marketplace of Ideas is my religion....

[Lisa0825]

7. welcome to DU!

:hi:

[struggle4progress]

6. If you are deeply concerned about amputees, why don't you work to heal them?

If you are deeply concerned about people who are starving, why don't you work to feed them?

If I cannot expect a salient answer to such questions, then there is little point of responding to a long tirade of the sort you just posted, except to point out some psychological issues it raises

Although it pretends to masquerade as a "rational investigation," the tirade suggests that its author holds various strange and irrational views: the formula as a Christian, you believe (for example) apparently disguises the author's certainty that he/she has a certain ESP-like ability to read minds. And the object of the tirade is not really any "rational investigation" -- instead, the intent seems to be to reinforce the author's sense of superiority by belittling others. It is easy to see how these features might reinforce each other: to maintain a delusion of rational superiority, the author project his/her own superstitious irrationalities onto other people, then attacks those projected views by attacking the people on whom the views have been projected, as if the others were themselves the source of the author's projections

[jgraz]

8. So, can you answer any of the author's questions?

The author isn't arguing for or against humans helping anyone. He's merely asking why the traditional christian god is unable or unwilling to help in these cases. Do you have any thoughts on the matter, or are you just too insulted that someone would ask the question?

BTW, you don't need ESP-like powers to posit what christians believe. There's, like, a book and everything...

[struggle4progress]

44. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"

Not every grammatical arrangement of words is meaningful. Nor does the arrangement of words into a grammatical "question" always produce a query that it might be worthwhile to attempt to answer

A sentence can be judged by the actual information it conveys. Similarly the value of a supposed "question" can be judged by what we might accomplish, if we could obtain the answer

The "questions" raised by the OP, regarding amputees and hungry people, are not genuine questions: instead, they play some role in a rhetorical game. But amputees and hungry people are not mere abstractions: the questions we might usefully ask, regarding them, would not treat them simply as pawns for rhetoric

[jgraz]

46. You don't get to act insulted by the question and then pretend you don't understand it

Here, I'll make this easy:

Does God answer prayers? If so, why does he not answer the prayers of amputees or starving children?


Simple question, easily understood. Do you have an answer?

[struggle4progress]

54. As indicated previously, I have no interest in rhetorical games

:hi:

[jgraz]

57. That's like saying Sarah Palin has no interest in vapid, sarcastic speeches.

[struggle4progress]

61. No: when you ask "Does G-d answer prayers?" you are asking a question that you yourself

regard as a meaningless question; you do not expect an answer to be informative; rather, you expect to play that answer against the answer to a second question that you also regard as meaningless

Now, to ask a person two questions, both of which you yourself regard as meaningless, with the aim of catching them in a contradiction, cannot possibly qualify as "rational investigation" -- at best, it is a rhetorical game, and so no meaningful discussion will result

[jgraz]

63. The fact that you cannot deliver two non-contradictory answers is highly meaningful

In fact, that's the entire point of the conversation: that no one can answer these questions in any way that makes logical sense. Now, I know that most theists will insist that "logic" is in that eye of the beholder, but it really isn't -- no more than addition or multiplication is.

Of course I don't expect an informative, consistent answer. I've had these discussions too often and I know the inevitable result. You are, however, free to prove me wrong. Until that time, I'll continue to take it as read that belief in a supernatural being is a form of delusional thinking.

[struggle4progress]

76. This "contradiction" is a feature of *your* linguistic formulation

[jgraz]

77. A standard theistic rhetorical ploy: "It's not 'logic', it's 'language'"

Actually, it's logic -- as rigorous as physics or number theory. You just don't like the results so you treat it the way creationists treat the fossil record.

[struggle4progress]

80. As it seems that you really do not know enough about "logic," I shall attempt to school you slightly

"Logic" is essentially linguistic in origin, as shown by the etymology of "logic" from the Greek "logos" (meaning "word"). Logic purports to help us order our use of language as an aid to thought

Logic is a great tool -- but nobody gets useful results by just grabbing it off the shelf and waving it about: some restrictions apply. It has been recognized for millennia that careless use of language produces logical gobbly-de-gook. An old example is the so-called Liar Paradox: (The sentence in italics, that you are now reading, is untrue). Presumably you are familiar with it and the problem it poses. One may approach the Liar Paradox in various ways: for example, one might try to "solve" it by identifying the cause of the problem. One such solution identifies the self-reference of the sentence as the difficulty. Self-reference causes problems in a number of contexts. For example, there is the Autological-Heterological Problem: Call an adjective "autological" if it can be applied to itself and "heterological" otherwise. Thus, "short" is autological (since "short" is indeed a short word) while "irritated" is heterological (since the word "irritated" is not itself irritated). Since any given word either applies to itself or does not, every word should be either autological or heterological. So: is "heterological" autological or heterological? Around 1900, Bertrand Russell completely destroyed Frege's logic by exhibiting a problem like that. Russell and Whitehead attempted to avoid such difficulties in their Principia by carefully establishing a hierarchy of types, which unfortunately rendered their logicism far too cumbersome to be really useful

Here's a sample general-purpose not-too-technical conclusion: meaningful statements, which can be used for logical reasoning, always have an appropriately limited scope. In concrete situations, the scope is provided by material references: "That's a lion! Quick! Get in the car!" Although you might speak meaningfully about "everything in this room," you simply cannot speak meaningfully about "everything," because the required scope is missing. If you insist on speaking about "Superhero who can do anything," then (of course) you can play amusing word games along the lines of "Can Superhero think of something Superhero can't do?" -- but however much fun you find those silly circles, you don't get to blame me for any nonsense noises your games produce

[jgraz]

82. Shit, I almost said "next you'll drag out the dictionary", but I thought it too insulting

Theists are nothing if not predictable. Must be all those rituals.

[FatDave]

47. C'mon! You're not even trying here!

Not every grammatical arrangement of words is meaningful. Nor does the arrangement of words into a grammatical "question" always produce a query that it might be worthwhile to attempt to answer

We're discussing the very existence pf God. That's not a question worth answering?

A sentence can be judged by the actual information it conveys. Similarly the value of a supposed "question" can be judged by what we might accomplish, if we could obtain the answer

See above.

The "questions" raised by the OP, regarding amputees and hungry people, are not genuine questions: instead, they play some role in a rhetorical game. But amputees and hungry people are not mere abstractions: the questions we might usefully ask, regarding them, would not treat them simply as pawns for rhetoric

You don't like the inevitable conclusion, so you say the questions are not valid and refuse to answer them? I'm afraid you're the one playing rhetorical games here.

You go ahead and deny that these questions are valid if it helps you to deny the painful truth. But I hope they linger in the back of your mind and at least lead you to question your beliefs a little bit.

[struggle4progress]

51. I have always taken the POV in R/T that existence debates are sophomoric and pointless

[FatDave]

56. What makes them sophomoric and pointless?

To inquire into the very core of your beliefs is somehow sophomoric and pointless? If your beliefs cannot stand up to basic questioning, then what makes them worthy of being believed? Why is it pointless to ask "are my life's guiding principles worthy of being my life's guiding principles?" It seems to me that it is a fundamental question that all should ask.

Are you sure that it's not a matter of refusing to question because you don't like the answers?

[jgraz]

58. Because the theists always lose?

Just a guess...

[struggle4progress]

60. Certain assumptions, by posters like yourself (for example, that

(1) you understand anything about the "core of my beliefs";
(2) I do not and am not willing to question my "life's guiding principles";
(3) you are providing useful insights about the "basic questions" I should ask myself; or
(4) I have so little intellectual and moral integrity that I do not consider questions the answers to which I might find inconvenient)

certainly drive discussion in sophomoric and pointless directions

A more careful explanation of the non-utility of existence debates can also be given -- and in fact, if you searched this forum, you would find that I have repeatedly offered such explanations

[FatDave]

69. I'm done here.

It's not worth debating because you say it's not worth debating. Same old circular logic. Enjoy your life.

[jgraz]

78. Did you really wade into this discussion just to say you don't wish to discuss it?

Seriously, how does that work?

[struggle4progress]

81. Nope: I wanted to find out if the references to amputees and hungry people indicated real concern or

whether these references were simply rhetorical tokens. I think that question has been answered

[jgraz]

83. So you just wanted to derail the subject toward an argument you thought you could win

Specifically, who is more "Christian". Well played, sir. Well played.

[moggie]

85. God's goalposts move in mysterious ways n/t

[struggle4progress]

92. We apparently disagree about what constitutes "theology" and what the aims of "theology" are

If the discussion actually aid for amputees or feeding the hungry, I might consider that the post actually had objectives I'd consider theological

But the post is essentially about using amputees and the hungry as rhetorical pawns: I don't find any interesting theological content here

[jgraz]

95. And yet you keep commenting.

Amputees present a particular problem for christian theology, as do suffering children. They are not "rhetorical pawns", they are logical issues with your belief system.

Of course, you'd rather feign outrage that we noticed this gaping hole in your worldview rather than address it directly. If the existence of amputees and starving children offends your sensibilities, there are many other questions in the OP that you could address. Yet, for some reason, you seem completely incapable of focusing your responses on any of the pertinent questions raised.

[Taverner]

65. Exactly - it, down deep, is "the" question here

Does God (or gods) exist or not?

Don't get me wrong - just because you don't believe in god doesn't mean you have to stop going to church. Unitarians go to church every Sunday, and many of them are Atheists. Just ask yourself why you hold on to theism.

[knitter4democracy]

105. I like that. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Good poetic line. I think putting dreams in for ideas would work a bit better. Internal rhyme, constrasting with sleep, gives a touch more meaning to furiously. Where's the rest of the poem? :)

[roguevalley]

71. personally, we all have free will and this shit is ours. God has nothing

to do with it. Where does it say that when we do stupid shit, God has to fix it. We are responsible. Period.

[ZombieHorde]

72. Why is it cool for god to turn his back on suffering, but not people?

[Polato Deferred]

79. WELL

you see it's not that god won't help amputees. In Genesis Adam and Eve choose to eat from the tree over gods way. when they chose that god gave us the right to chose and when things like that happens it's our choice. I'm not saying it's the amputee's choice but what happened to make them lose a limb? Was it war, "war is caused by something ignorant in the HUMAN heart" A Separate Peace. Was it cancer, definitely caused by humans whether it be things in the air or products make. Was it diabetes, caused by our constantly high sugar in take.do you see where i'm going with this?

[Silent3]

94. I see where you're going, and it's BS

Cancer has existed for a long time, probably nearly as long as there have been multi-cellular organisms. Cancer and diabetes certainly have existed for as long as there have been human beings -- modern life may increase the incidence of those things, but they are hardly new. It's a bullshit argument if you're trying to pretend all incidents of such ailments are due to some "unnatural" or "evil" human choice.

So how does your "theory" (to use a word that's better than your idea deserves) apply to humans who lose limbs because of infected insect bites, tigers attacts, or tree branches falling and crushing an arm or a leg?

[cyborg_jim]

96. Before schizophrenia was recognised it was the demons that did it

Better records of what actually occurs generally means you'll record more incidents of it.

Can't record incidents of cancer if you don't know what it is.

[Silent3]

97. Yeah, but doncha know...

...that all bad things are cause by humans being so evil? If humans went away, or if they started follow The Right Way (Particular details of "The Right Way" are subject to change without notice. Your mileage may vary.) the World would be a Perfect Place, where no one ever got cancer or diabetes or lost a limb or an eye, where the lion laid down with the lamb, where the sky was always blue and pretty little birds sang joyful songs in harmony?

[Silent3]

89. I'm eager to hear about your work healing amputees.

Since the standard here appears to be that you can't ask questions about misfortunes of others which you aren't actually working to fix, because that would be, I suppose, exploitative by your standards, and your question also mentions amputees, you must be actively involved in curing amputees yourself.

Are you working on advanced prosthetics? Regenerative technology?

I'll just confess to being a shallow and indifferent to the plight of amputees so that I can, by your standards, ask a coldly calculating question. Let me see if I can set the ground rules so you might deign to answer the question.

1) The question is about believers in general, not about special individuals such as yourself who have incredibly deep and intellectually advanced spirituality beyond what any of the rest of us can hope to understand without years of devotion to sacred texts, philosophy, advanced mathematics, and research into healing amputees.

2) There is no expectation that you are able to "read minds" of other believers, and you won't be accused of being presumptuous about what other believers think. (I hope that doesn't make the question too terribly hypothetical for you. We wouldn't want to waste your valuable time, or take you away from the time you would otherwise be spending with amputees and starving people who need your help.)

So, how do you imagine it is that God (popular ideas of God, not your incredibly advanced, erudite concept), and prayers for God's help, are often credited with helping cure people of all sorts of afflictions, but only those which, unlike missing limbs, involve changes in physiology which occur conveniently out of plain sight, only changes which are less obvious and dramatic than limb regrowth, changes that are hard to differentiate from the kinds of things the body might be capable of doing on its own without help?

[HamdenRice]

9. "How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?" -- huh???

This is probably the most important way that some atheists fail to understand people of faith.

When I was growing up in a charismatic church, I had many friends and relatives who had experienced a personal vision of Jesus. That was the main reason many people became hyper-religious.

Other religious people have had other mystical experiences of god or the divine.

All other questions become secondary to religious people because the proof of their belief system is their personal experience.

You can say that those people had hallucinations or whatever. That's a different argument.

But unless you acknowledge the existence of their subjective experience, you will never understand religion and its appeal.

[Festivito]

10. What's the purpose of stirring this shit. The smell?

It's lengthy enough to waste our time.

It does nothing to help the Dem cause. Should churches be gone the more-wealth bent would infiltrate bars and VFW clubs instead. (As they do already.)

It also hurts the Dem cause by trying its best to alienate a whole block of voters ripe for picking.

And it in no way proves what it says it does being that even the reduction-near-absurdum of God being love connotes that love is complicated and evokes the strangest of actions, so many of which are just as shown in the OP, beyond human belief and especially beyond human rationale.

This is just more inbred claptrap from the DU religion dungeon that makes it out to recommended status as a result of too many overly protected dangerously inbred postings complete with its sycophantic glommers.

It's not provable, and when stirred it stinks.

[jgraz]

11. Perhaps you missed where this was posted?

The Religion/Theology forum is exactly the place for this kind of "shit-stirring".

[Taverner]

14. Eggs-actly :)

[Festivito]

21. I addressed that. It came out onto the recommended page.

Maybe that needs to be stopped.

[Occam Bandage]

23. So...you propose we stop discussing religion in the religion subforum?

[Festivito]

25. No. That its recommended posts stay inside itself.

The 9/11 forum does this. It keeps the inmates from leaving the asylum grounds.

[Occam Bandage]

26. The 9/11 forum is a place for speculative conspiracy theories that are banned elsewhere.

It makes sense that their threads do not leave the 9/11 forum; mentions of speculative conspiracy theories are forbidden elsewhere. Mentions of religion are not banned elsewhere on DU.

[Taverner]

28. So on a different note, do you agree or disagree with the OP?

And if so or not, why?

[Festivito]

36. My post 10, made 4 points, point 4 disagrees with OP's contention.

The other three points talk about posting it at all.

[Taverner]

37. Let me retort then

Or rather, ask you a question

Define god

Granted my argument is against the Judeo Christian God

But what if we were talking the Greek Gods? How do we know Zeus isn't alive and well, trying to eat his kids?

I digress...

[Festivito]

39. Try: God is love.

Unless you really meant a small-g god, which could be more generic.

[Taverner]

40. Well then if god is love, the OP pretty much rules his or her existence out

Meaning, god is imaginary

[Festivito]

41. No. Per what I had said in 10, it does not. /nt

[Evoman]

55. So god is just an emotion in your head?

Alrighty.

[Taverner]

66. I would argue that he is an application, much like in computers

He is something that runs in the background, but influencing the operating system.

The computer is the perfect analogy for the human mind - after all, we created it as such.

[Festivito]

74. Why just in my head and not my heart?

Why just an emotion. ...for an almighty, alrighty...

Why, next it will be a second hand emotion.
Guess it depends on the emoter and emotee.

Only in a head, only an emotion. Hmmmm. No.

[cosmik debris]

91. What??????

You are asking someone else to define your terms for you?????

You posted this long tedious "argument" claiming that god is imaginary and now you need someone else to define god???

How can your "argument" have any credibility when you can't define the very thing you are describing as "imaginary"?

[Occam Bandage]

12. An argument against literal Biblical fundamentalism is not an argument against theism.

The problem of evil has been debated for thousands of years by intelligent people in most every culture on Earth. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pages have been written on it in scores of languages in dozens of religions. I think it's a little bit deliberately ignorant to simply re-ask a question that theologians, monks, and laymen across the globe have debated endlessly, and act as if the asking is somehow conclusive.

[Taverner]

13. Evil is a construct we created to understand our world

Just like 'magic', 'prayer' and 'good'

In reality there is no good, no evil - simply atoms.

[Occam Bandage]

15. And so it may be,

though until there is a reasonable, intuitive, complete explanation for why exactly your atoms have the conscious experience of existing, "it's all atoms" is going to continue to lose the fight for mindspace. Children intuitively believe that there is something that makes a person or a dog different from a cabinet or a car. They eventually may ask, "I feel, dogs apparently feel, and yet I doubt a cabinet feels or a car feels. Why do I feel?"

Religion provides a handy explanation in the concept of the soul.

[Taverner]

16. Yes but science does as well

The cabinet does not feel because the atoms are not connected in a way that can sustain life.

The atoms in a dog or cat are connected this way

The question for me is not why do we feel and the cabinet does not, but more along the lines of: Why is there a trend towards life, and down the road, sentience? Our universe has a history of moving from the simple to the complex, and there seems to be some kind of law of nature there.

[Occam Bandage]

18. Ah, but science does not, my friend.

There is nothing in the notion of "sustaining life" that demands consciousness; a tree is not conscious, nor is a sponge, despite being quite clearly alive. You might claim the brain provides consciousness, but without further explanation that's simply magical thinking; there is nothing inherently "conscious" about neural tissue. It processes input and provides an output--but so does a logic gate, and so does an engine (after a fashion.)

What is it about that arrangement of proteins, lipids, and charged solutions of ions that leads to consciousness? How exactly does unfeeling, reactive tissue lead to the distinct notion of feeling? I mean, after all, It's the same tissue (well, very closely the same) in the frontal lobe as in the occipital, but yet a person with an occipital lesion will have full consciousness (though he'll be blind in a very interesting manner), and one with a large frontal lesion will have impaired or nonexistent consciousness.

People are inclined to wonder, "What am I?" You might answer, "a conscious array of matter." They might then ask, "What is consciousness?" As a truthful person, you would have to reply, "I do not know." Science does not yet know, despite great effort in multiple fields of research, and despite extraordinary and fascinating knowledge of various aspects of it (note I am not claiming that science cannot or will not know). Consciousness defies simple description.

Religion has a simple explanation that is not easily proven wrong.

[Taverner]

20. Consciousness is another illusion

Basically its a trick your body plays on you making you think your mind and body are separate.

It's a meme that seems to be prevalent in other primates.

[Occam Bandage]

22. Very Buddhist of you,

but a trick being played by your body on "you" implies a distinct "you" being tricked, now doesn't it? It's hard to trick nonexistence--unless we're falling headfirst into Buddhist thought, in which case we ought throw science square out the window, because we're muddling about in religion's playground.

[Taverner]

27. Not really buddhist, but in line with modern psychology

How would you define consciousness, really?

Is a dog conscious?

Is a tree?

If we are limiting it just to humans, would someone with severe autism be conscious?

Is someone in an intoxicated state conscious? What about someone with no short term memory?

Really we start getting into a pickle once we start defining conscious...

Thing is there is no 'soul' in your body. There is only your brain, which is a very complex organic computer. No more, no less. It is a computer that has mastered tools so that it can record its data in stored form. We merely have a more complex computer in our head than dogs or fish.

So when I speak of 'me' or 'you' I am referring to that computer in your skull, because that is who you are. If I were to remove your temporal lobes, you would have no morals or ethics.

It's all chemicals my friend.

[Occam Bandage]

30. How would I define it? I don't know, and neither do you, and neither does anyone else.

Religion claims it does, and that's a major reason for its appeal.

Now, the brain is indeed a complex organic computer, but computers aren't conscious, no matter how complex you make them. Any computer can be replicated by physical wooden logic gates (though a modern computer would of course be unfeasibly large in such a mockup), and if a cabinet isn't conscious, it's hard to claim that a cabinet with little moving levers is conscious. The brainstem is neural tissue but has no elements of consciousness. The spinal cord is neural tissue but has no elements of consciousness. The occipital lobe is neural tissue but has few if any elements of consciousness (visual processing, but not visual integration). The question I'm asking, and the question most people ask on some level, is this: why does the particular network of neural tissue in a particular human frontal lobe give rise to a particular consciousness? What is this consciousness, and what makes it exist, and why, and why not elsewhere?

If you're honest, the answer to each of those questions is: "I don't know, something in the interaction of the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes but we're not exactly sure where (though we do know where individual aspects of your consciousness come from), I don't know, and I don't know."

And a guy saying "I don't know" to a universal question is not going to get nearly as many people to pay attention to him as a guy providing answers, no matter how good his reasons for saying I don't know, and no matter how unverifiable the other guy's answers are.

[Taverner]

31. Because somewhere in our evolution we evolved the concept of 'self'

Think of 'consciousness' as the Operating System of said computer. I don't know when we developed this sense of self, but it definitely helped us survive. Perhaps such a complex organic computer as our brain needs the concept of self otherwise it will go insane.

To be honest we don't know if dogs and cats have a concept of self. They might - we're not dogs so we'll never know.

As for computers developing this sense of self, it's already on the way my friend. Artificial Intelligence is in the process of doing it now (Stanford, for one, has made great strides in this area). Current hardware won't allow it, but the new quantum chips might be able to tackle this. Question is - do we actually want computers with 'souls'?

[Occam Bandage]

34. A "sense of self" is not identical to consciousness. A current computer can easily distinguish

what is "this computer" and what is "other computers," for it is programmed to do so. Do you actually believe that ability to process data distinguishing the processor from the world surrounding is what we call "consciousness?" If so, would you think a person in deep meditation, who has lost the sense of self completely, does not possess any consciousness at that moment?

As an atheist, a scientist, and a Buddhist, I'll state now that I have through neurological biofeedback techniques commonly referred to as "zen meditation" modified my brain to temporarily be incapable of distinguishing the self, and have maintained full consciousness while doing so.

[Taverner]

35. Ok, then let's get back to defining consciousness

If consciousness is not a sense of self, what is it?

Being able to look at the world around you in relationship to yourself? That's how I have defined it, and that is how Modern Psychology defines it. Granted it wasn't always that way.

I would argue that if it isn't sense of self, then it doesn't exist. and we are merely highly complex organic computers reacting to stimuli around us.

Stimuli internally is expressed in chemical terms. Say when you hear your favorite song, what is that but a bunch of wavelengths that your brain has translated into chemicals and neurons firing, and somewhere in your body a gland is secreting a chemical - perhaps dopamine, perhaps seratonin. I'm not a brain chemist. I'm not even a scientist - just a devotee of science (unless you consider my Computer experience enough to make me a scientist.)

But I know enough about the human body to know that its all chemical. All that you feel, all that you see - its all chemicals and neurons doing complex activity in your brain. This is, consciousness.

As for me, I'm science-savvy, but not a scientist, a nihilist and an atheist.

[Beam Me Up]

24. So, you're not conscious?

Or maybe I don't understand what you mean by "consciousness" that you say doesn't exist. I'm confused by your statement.

[Taverner]

32. Consciousness = a sense of self

This sense of self is a meme we evolved over time, and it is unclear if it is exclusive to humans

But it is an illusion that we have that our mind and body are different things. They aren't - they are one and the same.

[Evoman]

29. That's it exactly...it's been debated endlessly. Why?

Because it plain old doesn't make sense. Unless you understand that there is no god...then it makes perfect sense. "God is imaginary" really is a good solution to almost every theological debate.

The emperor has no clothes.

[Occam Bandage]

33. Pretty much. It's a huge thorn in religion's side. Many other eternal questions

have easy, simple, intuitive answers in religion. The most popular religions here in the West answer them with "Because there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-benevolent force." That can be squared with the existence evil easily enough, but whichever justification you pick is going to lead to more and more questions, and the idea gets less simple, less intuitive, and more tangled-up the longer you keep answering them--which is why there are so many damn answers.

I might say, "God doesn't heal amputees because humans were created by God with free will, and if God patches up everything in the world that's bad, then humans cannot make meaningful moral decisions, preventing humans from achieving goodness." However, that leads to a multitude of further questions, encompassing free will, the posited existence of miracles, the morality of God using humans as means to an end, and the necessity of starting off humans without that goodness.

One of the reasons I like Buddhism: It starts out by admitting that evil and suffering exist, and that the deity/ies either don't exist, don't care, or aren't able to fix them, and so they're utterly and completely beside the point any way you slice it.

[Taverner]

38. My biggest problem with buddhism is that it attempts to define evil

And I don't think you can.

Let's take an example - Adolf Hitler. It's always fun to bring him up.

You and I would define him as evil. Yet his dogs would not. Rudolph Hess, Josef Mengele and Himmler would not. Prescott Bush wouldn't. So more of us say he was evil than he was good - is consensus the ultimate definition of objective good and evil?

My point is that yes, there is suffering - and there are ethics. But no morals. Morals are made up scare tactics. Ethics are real. Genocide is ethically wrong because it causes suffering.

This I think is our biggest problem in this country - mixing up ethics and morals.

[Occam Bandage]

48. I don't believe that it does, at least in the way you suggest.

Under a Buddhist view, Adolf Hitler is not intrinsically evil, because nobody is intrinsically anything. There is no intrinsic Self, and so there is no good man or evil man. Separating and defining people into isolated camps of "good" and "evil" is very un-Buddhist, as the Buddha teaches that suffering is caused by greed, and greed is caused by the notion of an isolated Self.

In Buddhism, evil is not something that one is, nor is it some force in the world. Evil is something that is done. And nobody would doubt that Adolf Hitler caused great suffering. However, if I, as a Buddhist, am to say, "Adolf Hitler was an evil man," I am suggesting that Adolf Hitler was an independent, isolated entity. In turn, I am suggesting that I am an independent, isolated entity. I acknowledge the Self. That justifies my desires, and thus perpetuates them, and thus encourages suffering in myself and others.

Buddhism recognizes suffering and evil. That does not mean that it recognizes individuals as good and evil. The "best" person is not a person at all, if that makes sense.

[Taverner]

53. OK I can buy that - sorta

But even the act, if we break them down (and stay with me as I do go reducto ad absurdum here) the action was not evil, but it did cause suffering. Suffering was the end result, and the intent.

Thing is I'm a Nihilist. I think there is nothing in this universe that has any intrinsic meaning. I truly believe "God is Dead." and that's a good thing.

But I part ways with Nietzsche when he starts talking about the race of supermen. IN fact I think he is contradicting himself there.

I look at it this way - there is no god. Because there is no god, we must use what works (the scientific method) to eliminate what we don't want (suffering)

Basically, we need to be our own Jesus, our own Moses, and our own God.

[ZombieHorde]

59. I believe that good and evil are emotions, similar to fear and friendship.

So Hitler may not have been your friend, but he still may have had friends (I don't really know if he had friends or not).

[Taverner]

64. Agreed

And emotions are mere chemical reactions

[cyborg_jim]

84. Less of the "mere" chemical reactions

They're pretty spectacularly complex after all.

[felinetta]

17. RELIGION SUCKS !!!!!!!!!!!!

god stuff is total crap. And when these people talk about their "god", I always ask, what god? whose god? And have you ever seen so many vengeful gods? Who would want to be connected with these chump gods? And watching god groups fighting each other looks as ridiculous and absurd as would Santa Claus believers dropping nukes on Easter Bunny believers. It's all fairy tales. Wake up sheeple and take responsibility for your own lives.

I have this magnet on my fridge that says: He's your god, you burn in hell!

[Occam Bandage]

19. When people talk about "their god," wouldn't the answer to "whose god" always be "mine?"

[Azooz]

42. What "excellent" argument?

There are Egyptian Coptic priests I listen to often on Egyptian TV, and Armenian ones on the Lebanon chanel, in Arabic they make a lot more sense than the Hagee's and Robertsons etc. I'll try to avoid my own religion and use theirs and I'll go further into any question if required. I have to mix religions a bit but I do so only to say that these arguments against Christianity and the Bible are false to me.

question #1: Why won't God heal amputees?
- So we can help them, and they can be patient with us if we don't. A good Christian will look at amputees differently than a bad one and amputees to can use religion to help them accept and cope.


#2: Why are there so many starving people in our world?
Because there are too many heartless and greedy misers, wealth is a test as is poverty. I do not know the Bible well but I do know that the misers and the greedy are not God's favorite people - but the poor are.


#3: I'll skip this one - kill and go to hell directly, no excuses.


#4: I'll skip this one to - But the Bible was changed according to my theology.

5) Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery?
Humans are all born free, and with the same rights - don't blame God for adult human Pride, vanity and arrogance. The long honored name "Slave of God" is not the name of a slave owner.


6) Why do bad things happen to good people?
That reminds me of many a great sermon I heard by many a good priest - God tests as humans do. Life is not perfect, live with it - religion makes living with it easier. Children die, parents die, countries get destroyed - religion helps, and good responses that show patience and acceptance are better than those of anger, hate and revenge.


7) Why didn't any of Jesus' miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence?
Many saw his miracles and rejected him any way - same as the dumb idiots who saw the Red Sea part and still went after Moses (pbuh). The Bible itself should be enough and contains wisdom enough to help guide to what he actually said.


8) How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?
I'd reject it and seek medical attention is he or anyone else "appeared" to me, but I see him well enough when I read about him.


9) Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood?
My answer to that is some few Romans again, they thought that changing the Bible would only get them a few days in hell but they will spend eternity instead - if only for causing such confusion after centuries.

10) Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians?
Because they were created as human as all other humans - and divorce is not to be taken lightly by anyone. Theology is there to help in the man woman thing and even at it's worst we thank God for our "others" despite problems, Catholics have to be more patiant with their spouses that can be either good or bad but patiance is always good.

Those questions prove nothing, and I am no theologian - but I think that the last question emphasis my point:

"Now, let me ask you one last question: why should you care? What difference does it make if people want to believe in a "god", even if he is imaginary?"

Humans know right from wrong naturally from birth, no religion required for that and it even comes before religion. What religion does is to make you want to empower the good within you and to weaken the bad. A married man sees a nice looking young woman - no religion in that, two choices always, "imaginary or not" should not depend on how nice that young woman looks, but it does.

The Bible is a true book of wisdom that had some changes done to it - skip the bad parts like most do and blame the ROmans for them. But even if was perfect from a scientific perspective many people would still find reason to doubt it - even if it was the best written book on Earth and with truly incredible knowledge it could still be rejected by educated and uneducated people - same as those who heard and saw him walk among them in the past. They had no cause to doubt their eyes when they saw him walk on water but still rejected him - keep that in mind always when you read it.

[jgraz]

43. I believe I speak for most your readers when I say, "Whuh?"

:wtf:

[FatDave]

50. Your post is full of circular logic and plain nonsense, but let me address one thing in particular.

You said:

#3: I'll skip this one - kill and go to hell directly, no excuses.

No excuses? So what if God demands that you kill, as he did time and time again in the Old Testament?

[Azooz]

70. Part of why I skipped it

Remember that it is not my theology here nor my book, but if God orders me to kill I would go to a nice mental hospital. Natural survival instincts demand that you defend yourself and defend your family etc - let me also fix a language mistake, I meant murder not kill, murder differs from killing and that is for a judge to decide. Matters of right and wrong have limits, judges decide and God judges their decisions to. When it is a choice play it safe and be meek, turning the other cheek is recommended. The wording here is vital becuase it is right to kill sometimes but those times have to be acceptable to all - what applies to "enemy" applies to sons to.

Pick one that I did not skip because I honestly think they were added by humans and can not argue their theology.

[ZombieHorde]

62. Some alternate ideas.

Because there are too many heartless and greedy misers, wealth is a test as is poverty. I do not know the Bible well but I do know that the misers and the greedy are not God's favorite people - but the poor are.

I don't know why, but I was thinking about this today when I woke up.

Does god have a right to judge anyone for not helping the poor, when he himself is not willing? He could do it so much easier than any human could, yet he chooses not to. Why does god get a pass on this when people do not?

The long honored name "Slave of God" is not the name of a slave owner.

18Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. 19For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 20But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
22"He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." 23When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter%2... ;&version=31;

Note that it says 'masters' as opposed to 'master'. If it just said 'master', then that master could be god, but it says 'masters'.

What difference does it make if people want to believe in a "god", even if he is imaginary?"

Evolution education in schools-
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/0...
Exorcism death-
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24161674-401,00.ht...
Mohamed cartoon-
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hb2PHp-NW-EuWqRvwA7...

What religion does is to make you want to empower the good within you and to weaken the bad.

If only this were true.

[Azooz]

73. don't judge

I sometimes wake up to a picture of a starving African child with a vulture behind her, waiting - would you so easily judge her parents, her extended family or her village? Millions like her - do not blame or judge God for it because our role in her misfortune will be judged, else there is no justice at all. I know you would help her if you could, same as most people - just mind who you blame. I belive God loves her more than her own mother - the value of this belief is that it makes me want to help her more.

Wealth is not a curse, nor is it a sin - a rich person knows it is good to help the poor, misers avoid the poor while the generous seek them. Some people are taller than others, some faster, some stronger, some smarter - it is how you use those things that is judged. Faith in his or her religion should make a miser seek to become more generous, that is what is judged - and you will notice that the role of God is for the after-life, a person who thinks it is imaginary has no reason or drive to become more generous.

Slavery is a function of a rich and powerful people taking advantage of poor weak people - slaves have the advantage of knowing that they are all humans and all equal, slave owners can believe that to but find it harder to accept and fall for the sin of pride - ie they go to hell if they act on that pride. 1995 (plus or minus a year or two) was a year with no slavery, I know this because there were many groups of people who seek slaves and buy their freedom as a from of repentance - slavery is back and they are back to work freeing them, but with a lot less funds.

>Mohamed cartoon-
That was a thing that had too much propaganda value or it would not have had so much media attention - but in the end Arabs got a nice book of 100 poems from a 100 great poets out of it called "why we love him". I'm not into poetry but it settled down the angry ones fast and the propaganda about it no longer worked as well.

The other two links i'll skip because I do not think they effect religion but show people abusing religion.

>>If only this were true.
What I am saying is that a person's religion Should drive that person to become a nicer and better person, else his or her religion is just a noun - and if it makes them act wrong then it is wrong or they got it wrong. My current gripe is with holy death squads, so I do agree in part but I blame greedy and murderous clergy who use ignorance of religion, not religion.

[ZombieHorde]

90. would you so easily judge her parents

I would not judge her parents, family, or village because they don't have the power to do anything about the situation. According to the Holy Bible, God can create food in the form of plants just by saying a word. On DU, we constantly judge republicans for not using their power to help the poor, the only logical reason to give God a pass is if he is imaginary.

*Wealth is not a curse, nor is it a sin

18A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

19"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. 20You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'"

21"All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.

22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

23When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. 24Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

26Those who heard this asked, "Who then can be saved?"

27Jesus replied, "What is impossible with men is possible with God."

28Peter said to him, "We have left all we had to follow you!"

29"I tell you the truth," Jesus said to them, "no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life."
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2018;&version=31;

33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2014;&version=31;

*it is how you use those things that is judged.

It seems that according to Luke, Jesus says the way to use wealth is to give it all away. It does not come right out and say that being wealthy is a sin, but it does say that you will not go to Heaven if you don't get rid of your wealth.

*and you will notice that the role of God is for the after-life,

According to the Holy Bible, God takes a very active roll in the events on our planet. He destroys cities, gives farm animals to the faithful, appears before people, and sends us Jesus Christ.

*a person who thinks it is imaginary has no reason or drive to become more generous.

I hear this often. It makes me wonder if the sole reason many people perform good deeds is for the payment of heavenly reward, or the fear of Hell. I have heard people claim that atheists are the only people capable of altruism for this very reason. I don't know if that is true or not, but there are some very good secular reasons for compassion. Here is one, what kind of world do you want to live in?

*Slavery is a function of a rich and powerful people taking advantage of poor weak people - slaves have the advantage of knowing that they are all humans and all equal, slave owners can believe that to but find it harder to accept and fall for the sin of pride - ie they go to hell if they act on that pride. 1995 (plus or minus a year or two) was a year with no slavery, I know this because there were many groups of people who seek slaves and buy their freedom as a from of repentance - slavery is back and they are back to work freeing them, but with a lot less funds.
Congratulations, you have found the hidden text!
I not following your point here. The subject of slavery before was in the context of the Holy Bible's stance on that particular topic.

*Mohamed cartoon- and The other two links i'll skip because I do not think they effect religion but show people abusing religion.

I chose these three cases carefully. All three of them need the context of religion to make any sense. The Crusades had elements of revenge (if I remember correctly), many cults have the element of power and sex, but the reaction to the cartoons, exorcisms, and disbelief in evolution are just so illogical, the only explanation is a gross misjudgment of reality. Unless of course they are right, though both Islam and Christianity can not be completely literally true, since they contradict each other.

[ZombieHorde]

98. Looking at some of your other posts, it seems that you are a Muslim.

If this is true, then my arguments that use the the New Testament in the Holy Bible are meaningless.

So, if you don't mind, what is your religious affiliation?

I have no real religious affiliation.

[Azooz]

100. True - but

One can not be a Muslim without accepting the Bible as a holy book, so your arguments are not meaningless to me. I am Muslim, but I knew the Bible long before the Koran from growing up in the U.K during the Beatles era. I listen to Christian priests in Arabic, it is an atheist tongue historically so English religious words like "sin" and "evil" have zero religious connotations and thus easier on the ears. I try to frame my answerers in this thread to the ideas I got from them, but skipped the ones I can not.

>>I have no real religious affiliation.
I leave the "real" stuff (sure knowledge) till after I am dead, the rest I play by ear and live my life with that knowledge. Language helps, but that is another topic I can not explain well.

[Azooz]

101. Slaves and slaves

22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

India has such people, they are called Fakir (sp). India has billioners to, some of them are very generous and some are power hungry misers - humans all. Wealth is not in itself bad but it is a great temptation and may make rich people overly proud and arrogant. I like the nice example of Bill Gates here, nothing holy about his actions, just very nice and makes humans nicer - but to follow Jesus (pbuh) one must be more generous than the generous atheists, this gives religion meaning.

Basic humans are nice and a starving person will be just as glad for food, a job or money from a secular or atheist person. Christians have that same basic human drive but their religion must drive them towards even more good deeds - it please God according to the Bible, the more religion means to them the more time and effort they spend on it.

>>don't know if that is true or not, but there are some very good secular reasons for compassion.
>>Here is one, what kind of world do you want to live in?
A world were people do not do bad things, and the more fear they have of doing those bad things the better - a good legal (justice) system and a healthy fear of God if it helps. A world were people try to be good, and the hope of pleasing God helps there to. This world we have is the world we live in and we are to try to make it better and not worst, and I can source that to John Lennon (rip) and others to.

The human mind is guided by a framework of thoughts and beliefs, built from the things we hear, read and see etc, they thus shape our actions. The Bible has two cases, eternal life in heaven for those that do good by God, but the second case is the promise of hell for those that do bad. Remove that fear and that hope, and what type of world will we have? The three cases are example of humans who did not use their brains, ignored their religions and are not good examples of bad religion but instead are example of clergy and politicians using religion for their own goals instead of God's.

>>According to the Holy Bible, God takes a very active roll in the events on our planet.
Add to those that He created each of us, gave us brains and full knowledge of right and wrong. I believe in evolution - but that does not make the Bible wrong, it just means some changed it for their own purpose. I'll stop here because it gets into the theology of religion and that is beyond me - but from a language base, Latin is much too small a language to translate Aramaic into, and it gives translators too much room to select wrong words.

I have to skip slavery, too much theology in it - but in Arabic the word slave is the same exact word for worshiper - in plural they differ but singular they are the same.

Nothing I have read supports the first idea that God is imaginary, but then I do not demand seeing God, or seeing miracles - things happen on Earth, good and bad - these things I live, with and will die anyway and thst is not imaginary. If I am wrong, so be it, it does not mean I will live any less of a life than someone who belives there is no God. I belive that there is meaning to all of this life, and beliveing in the after life the Bible mentions makes it more meaningfull, the punishment part helps me stay from doing bad deeds and the promise of the good helps me do good.

[Taverner]

68. FINALLY - someone who answers the questions!

Awesome!

I will answer your question first - Why should I care?

Because I seriously think the delusion of a God has caused so much harm in this world, we need to attune ourselves with reality. When 9/11 happened, the same thing happened to me that happened to Richard Dawkins - I realized it was the concept of faith that was the problem, not the solution.

Faith is belief without evidence.

Some have defined it as belief despite evidence, but I think the first definition is best.

Any time you make a decision based on faith, rather than evidence, you are making a mistake.

Mohammed Atta (if indeed it was he who flew into the WTC) made a big mistake. It was based on faith.

The Crusades were a big mistake - great suffering came out of that. It was based on faith.

Any time you follow faith, over reason you can get to this conclusion.

Sometimes you can be like Dorothy Day or St Francis and get the suffering issue. But many times not.

That's why.

[Azooz]

75. Language is a trick...

>>Faith is belief without evidence.
I have evidence that no one can refute at all. I remember another thread you had, I explained about language based faith - it did not go well because it's hard for me to explain in English. Richard Dawkins can explain his theories, but in Arabic he could not defend them, with enough Arabic I would just use the words of the Koran and it would be over. He has a well known interview with an Israeli convert to Islam, that is a friend of mine who thinks I am very weak in the faith part, and he's right.

Religions are to make people nicer to one another so they can go to heaven or some other nice place, think of it that way best - but if they make people worst then they go to hell same as all bad people. My current gripe is with "holy" death squads taught that murdering "others" is holy, but all I have to do is watch how language is being used to end them. It's a nasty situation but language is helping religion (and faith) to stop them and that is no simple thing.

Faith is supposed to make a person want to use their brain better, to make their thoughts and actions geared towards doing more good things and less bad - same brain without faith will have not as much reason to change it's bad thoughts. Faith is to act as a "governor" to limit yourself in some areas, the things you should not do but would like to do - the more faith the less likely you'll do them. If the faith makes you a worst person, then drop that faith, if it makes you a better person than that faith is good.

[cyborg_jim]

93. Azooz, you fundamentally don't get the problems we had with your "language based" evidence

Even if we were to accept that Arabic was the greatest language in the world and the Koran the greatest instance of it that doesn't mean a damn thing as to the truth content of it.

Art doesn't look more beautiful based on how true to reality it is. Sorry - you're fundamentally working off the assumption that "better art = more true" and that's fallacious no matter what you say about it. This does not appear to be a concept that you can grasp.

[Azooz]

99. I got it fine

You got my point correctly about it being a very well written book, and I really was not trying to prove any religion or theology becuase many Arab speakers accept is a a well written book but think nothing of it. My point might have got lost in my poor wording, what I ment was that even if the Bible had no "mistakes" and was itself a miricle of English writing we would still be arguaing about the truth of it.

Art sounds, not looks - many types of art exist but poetry is the master art, add a bit of music (another sound art), and it's Rock and Roll. I'll stop here about art because artists are even more touchy than theologians.

[FatDave]

45. You cannot reason with Christians.

Their faith demands that they ignore logic. It's the ultimate loophole. They believe because their beliefs say they must believe.

[Occam Bandage]

49. Try it. You might find yourself surprised.

[FatDave]

52. I probably should have said "fundamentalist Christians"...

...but these days the fundamentalist part pretty much goes without saying.

And I have been arguing with Christians for well over 20 years and have concluded that it's the ultimate example of teaching a pig to sing. It always, always, always, without exception, comes down to circular logic, most often expressed as "I believe every word of The Bible, and The Bible says it's true, therefore The Bible is true" or more succinctly "just because".

Then the argument devolves into to whether or not those answers are acceptable. To a person looking for rational answers, they obviously are not. Eventually I move on, unwilling to waste further time trying to educate fools.

[Taverner]

67. No - I think you were right the first time

Because once you go into these questions, they either refrain from discussion or react illogically.

Imagine asking Sarah Palin these questions...

[Jim__]

86. The reasoning sounds a lot like the reasoning used by proponents of Intelligent Design.

Namely, the questions pose a false dilemma.

The false dilemma is - can you explain why god does this? No? Then there is no god. The answer is a non-sequitur.

I think it is difficult for people to put themselves in the mindset of people they disagree with. The questions posed are pretty well-known and most theists have already dealt with them. That means, as powerful as they may sound to an atheist, they are not likely to convince a theist. Does that mean theists are irrational? Hardly.

Look at this from another perspective. I'm not a biologist, and I don't know the science involved in this hypothetical, but, just for grins, suppose a man had lost his leg below the knee. Suppose his church prayed for him and his leg gradually grew back. Would that convince you that god existed? It wouldn't convince me. My belief that there is no god is too deeply embedded in my world. My expectation would be that there was a biological explanation for what happened, and we just didn't understand it yet.

Take another example, near death experiences (NDE). Do any of them convince you of the existence of god or a spirit world? I know there are tentative explanations for some NDEs, but I've heard of others that I can't explain. Does that convince me that there is a god or a spirit world? No. I just think either the person has a faulty memory, or that the occurrence falls under an aspect of consciousness that we don't understand.

My discussions with theists convince me that neither of us understands existence. I find discussions interesting and productive in that they lead me to new thoughts. I don't try to convince them that they're wrong, and they don't try to convince me that I'm wrong. But testing your ideas against someone who disagrees with you is one way to learn how little you actually know.

[salvorhardin]

87. "can you explain why god does this? No? Then there is no god."

You said:

...can you explain why god does this? No? Then there is no god.

Yeah, but if god exists then surely that makes him a ripe old bastard undeserving of worship?

[cosmik debris]

88. You have shifted the burden of proof

Until you made the claim that god is imaginary, the burden of proof was on those who claim that god is real.

Now, you have made the claim that god is imaginary and the burden of proof is on you.

Asking questions does not prove that.

Asking questions only demonstrates that you do not understand.

In order to prove that god is imaginary, you need to provide verifiable facts, not questions.

Your so-called argument is nothing but a rant. And while I agree with you, you should not make claims that you can't back up, and you should not pretend that asking questions is a valid method of argument.

[knitter4democracy]

102. I don't like it when people ask questions and then answer them themselves.

It sounds too much like Rumsfeld.

The author obviously thinks he has all the answers (hmm, just like some Christians I know) and isn't actually interested in a discussion or a debate, just a "gotcha" moment. His entire premise is wrong--that Christians don't use their intellect as part of their faith--and he just digs deeper from there.

I could write a bunch of questions and skew them against atheists and post it, but that would be insulting to my atheist sisters and brothers, and they'd rightly call me on it.

[cosmik debris]

103. It's a great technique for debating against yourself,

But it doesn't work so well against a real opponent.

If this had been a debate, he would have gotten whacked.

Consider this possible scenario:

T: God Is imaginary.

cd: Present your evidence to support that claim.

T: I have these questions.

cd: Questions are not evidence.

T: I have these answers.

cd: Show the evidence that your answers are correct.

As it turns out, his "excellent argument" uses the claim as the evidence and the conclusion.

Claim: God is imaginary

Evidence: God is imaginary

Conclusion: God is imaginary

FAIL!

[knitter4democracy]

104. I know I got frustrated just by the first question.

I would've given a different answer, and that was where I got frustrated. I don't like someone trying to have a debate who answers for me.

You're right--he really doesn't have evidence (kind of hard to have any, really), and his circular logic gets annoying.

[cosmik debris]

107. It is the perfect example of confirmation bias.

And my evidence for that claim is his quote:

"Our world only makes sense when we understand that God is imaginary."

I suspect that the world makes a lot of sense to a lot of theists who would give different answers, but that is really unnecessary.

He made the claim, let him support it. If you provide him an alternate answer, he will attack your answer rather than support his claim.

Even an atheist like me can come up with plenty of alternative answers that would stymie his "excellent argument". But I decided not to post them. He should be able to support his claim without my help.

[knitter4democracy]

108. I used to fight that with my students.

When I taught high school English, I kept trying to explain that essays are really all about convincing the reader that you're right. If you use a question, you're giving them an option of giving a different answer and can then start disagreeing with you. Same with second person usage in a formal essay. Those darn "Have you ever" intros were driving me nuts!

[TechBear_Seattle]

106. An inassailable counter argument

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x183343